Online media licensing systems enable customers to search for, select, price and license digital media to be downloaded for subsequent use. Uses for digital media include advertising, incorporation into print publications such as newspapers and magazines, incorporation into online publications such as websites and blogs and personal consumption, such as listening to music at home.
Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, systems enable users to browse items for sale and add them to a cart prior to checkout or purchase. Typically the items are goods or services that have fixed prices. For example, the online e-commerce website of Amazon.com of Seattle, Wash., an e-commerce pioneer, enables a user to select a book, CD or DVD and add it to a cart. The user may checkout or may continue shopping. The behavior of the e-commerce system is independent of the intended use by the customer of the book, CD or DVD.
In contrast, digital media such as digital music and digital video is typically licensed under a set of licensing terms rather than purchased. Typically the user of a digital media system (DMS) that licenses digital media for professional or commercial purposes requests license rights using an interactive user interface running on a client computer. Then, the DMS computes the price for the requested rights and displays the price to the user.
Traditional online digital media systems that serve the needs of professional or commercial users typically offer two or more licensing models. Under the “rights managed” or RM licensing model, a digital media item is licensed for a specific set of rights. Licensed rights include, inter alia, time duration, geographic areas, and types of uses such as for print advertising, television, or web advertising and the like. Whereas under the “royalty free”, or RF, license model, digital media is licensed for an unlimited time period and for any usage. License models usually have specific pricing or pricing models. For example, media licensed under a RF model usually has a single price which does not depend on the intended usage. In some cases RF media may have a price based on a pricing tier and the price may vary based on sizes or quality. For example, a large image or a high quality music clip may have a higher licensing price than a smaller or lower quality media item.
In many cases, a digital media item to be licensed does not have a single, set, price that can be displayed in a catalog or on a website. To determine a price, a prospective licensee, also referred to as a customer or user, must specify the rights requested for the digital media item and a price calculation must be performed. Thus, digital media items may have two states, priced and unpriced. Thus, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.